Mark Test Cases as Automated

By default the push command creates the Test Cases as Not Automated. To be able to synchronize automated Test Cases (for all or for selected scenarios), you can configure SpecSync for this.

Marking the Test Cases as automated can be used to document the kind of the test. For using certain features of Azure DevOps (e.g. Test Suite based execution), marking the Test Cases as Automated is mandatory.

You can enable marking Test Cases as automated by setting the synchronization/automation/enabled configuration setting to true.

When the automation synchronization is not enabled, SpecSync resets the automation status to Not Automated when the Test Case is updated. In order to control the automation status with another tool or using the Update Test Case fields feature, you have to set the toolSettings/doNotSynchronizeAutomationUnlessEnabled configuration setting is set to true and the synchronization/automation/enabled configuration setting to false or leave it unset.

Optionally you can also specify the value to be used for the "Automated test type" field of the Test Case using the synchronization/automation/automatedTestType setting. (By default the field is set to SpecFlow for SpecFlow projects and Gherkin for other projects.)

After changing the automation configuration, you need to perform the push command with an additional --force setting. Using the --force setting is only required once.

specsync.json

{
  ...
  "synchronization": {
    ...
    "automation": {
      "enabled": true
    },
    ...
  },
  ...
}

In SpecSync v3.0 or earlier, the synchronization/automation/testExecutionStrategy had to be also specified when automation was enabled. From v3.1 this is not necessary and recommended to leave it unset, unless you want to use the legacy test-suite based execution method.

Marking only certain Test Cases as automated

In some projects the feature files contain non-automated scenarios as well. These scenarios are usually marked with specific tags, like @manual or @ignore or the automated ones are marked with a specific tag, like @automated.

In order to mark only the Test Cases for selected scenarios as automated, you can set a local test case condition in the synchronization/automation/condition configuration setting as shown below.

specsync.json

{
  ...
  "synchronization": {
    ...
    "automation": {
      "enabled": true,
      "condition": "not @manual"
    },
    ...
  },
  ...
}

Update the Test Case automation fields to custom values

The methods described above would update the Test Case automation fields to generally usable values. If your project configuration requires specific custom values to be set for these fields, you can update the fields individually using the synchronization/fieldUpdates configuration section that allows you to set values conditionally or decide if you want to set the values only when the Test Case is created (set "default" values) or on each update.

A detailed description of the steps required to configure these for the automation fields can be found in the Update automation fields section of the "Update Test Case fields" feature description.